


Losing Count

by matrixrefugee



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-20 08:39:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17619104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: It's Ianto's birthday and Jack can't help feeling conscious of the age difference between them.





	Losing Count

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/profile)[fic_promptly](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/)'s [Torchwood, Jack Harkness, He's lived so long, he's forgotten the day of his birth](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/2013/09/02/monday-birthdays.html?thread=8291671#cmt8291671) Definite AU.

Ianto's thirtieth birthday and Tosh had decided to go all out that day, baking a cake for their teaboy. Though that meant Myfanwy kept fluttering about the door to the lab, chirping and squawking, despite the times Owen and Gwen chased the pteranodon off with brooms.

"Never thought my job description would include chasing a winged *dinosaur* away from my workmate's birthday cake," Gwen said, laughing, staring up at the ceiling, as Owen waved the broom at the retreating winged thing, which roosted in the rafters, emitting angry noises that sounded like pteranodon curses

"Hate that thing," Tosh said, glaring out the doorway as she futzed with the last of the icing. "We'll have to have the party in the lab. Where is the birthday boy, anyway?"

"Hasn't shown up yet, neither has Jack," Gwen said. "Late night Weevil hunt had them tied up."

"Probably shorthand for gettin' his early present from our fearless leader," Owen grumped, joining the others in the laboratory.

As if on cue, they heard the cog door rolling open and the whir of the door alarm. A moment or two later, the scent of coffee brewing trickled in around the door and Jack stuck his head around the door, a contented look in his eye, as if Ianto and he had started the festivities already, true to Owen's speculation. "Ahh, that's where everyone was hiding," he teased. "Dinosaur got you on the run?"

"She kept trying to help herself to the cake," Tosh snipped.

"I'll get her back into her coop: I promised Ianto one day without a dinosaur fluttering around his head," Jack said, going on his way to round up Myfanwy.

"And now we'll have a few rounds of a dino aerial rodeo," Owen grumbled. A moment later, Myfanwy swooped across the Hub, Jack dangling from her right hind leg. From somewhere, Gwen swore she could hear Ianto giggling uncontrollably.

* * *

"So what's the age gap now?" Ianto asked, later, once the others had gone and two of them had the Hub to themselves.

Jack squinted at him sidewise. "You've seen my driver's license plenty of times," he said, hedging, then moving in to kiss Ianto, in a bid to distract him. "I'm thirty nine going on thirty nine."

Ianto put a hand out, holding Jack off, gently but firmly, looking him in the eye. "That's a cover, I know that: I've seen your files in the archives. When were you born, Jack?"

Jack met his gaze, calmly yet with a hint of resignation. "Does it really matter? Where I come from, we used a completely different calender. Different planet, different stars, different galaxy even."

"Tell me, as best as you can," Ianto said, sliding his hands up Jack's torso to rest them on his shoulders. "I want to know."

Jack looked over Ianto's shoulder, as if gazing down the vistas of time itself, at times and places Ianto could barely imagine.

"It was the cold season, what we'd call winter here, though it was more like First Winter, the cooler of the two," he replied, at length.

"Something like autumn?" Ianto asked.

Jack shook his head. "More like one winter followed by a short second summer, then followed by a second winter, longer and colder than the first," he explained. "Franklin, my father... he was what you might call the male midwife of our colony, our commune. So it was his turn to be the one having the kid. No idea who my other father was, some drifter on the space lanes, who stopped by and hung around long enough to plant me. Dad used to say I was nearly the death of him, since he had to do his own surgery on himself, with a woman helping him out. Ended up marrying him and he gave her a son, my brother..." He dropped his gaze, solemn now, saddened. Ianto clasped his hands behind Jack's neck, leaning his head on the taller man's shoulder. Jack slipped his arms about Ianto's waist, nuzzling his face into his lover's neck.

"Sorry... didn't mean to open old wounds," he said, thinking of Grey's body, stored down in the cold storage.

"It's all right, you needed to know and you asked for it," Jack said. "Part of my present for you." He kissed Ianto's cheek. "I'll have more stories for you later..."


End file.
